Crater Lake

Chapter Twelve

In the pale light of dawn, they passed a bullet-riddled sign, leaning drunkenly to one side, telling them they were on State Highway 62.

J.B. had found a creased and taped map of the district in the glove compartment of the big truck. He opened it carefully, knowing from previous experience how delicate very old documents could be. The light in the crowded cab was a faint, flickering, uncovered light bulb, and he angled the map beneath it, trying to hold it steady against the lurching of the big vehicle.

"Watch the damned bumps," he snarled at Finnegan, who was at the wheel.

"What the fucking bumps yourself!" The Kenworth hadn't taken kindly to being pushed along at a speed beyond what its age could handle. In the first hour a couple of the forward gears had stopped functioning, and the shift was becoming uncomfortably hot to touch.

"See where we're heading, J.B.?" Ryan Cawdor asked, blinking his good eye at the hills that towered up on either side of the blacktop. "There's a big mountain, called Mazama. Old volcano, with a round lake in its crater."

"Crater Lake," Doc Tanner said, yawning, trying to stretch himself awake and finding that there wasn't enough room for his spindly legs with Lori asleep in his arms.

"Know anything about that?" Ryan asked, hoping that the old man's precarious memory might be triggered off to give them some useful information.

"Some."

"Yeah? Go on."

Doc shook his head, his stringy hair dangling across his shoulders. "Cerberus and the other projects were intensely secret. But there were others. I was not privy to many of them."

Everyone in the party, except the albino boy, was awake. Krysty was puzzled. "What does 'privy' mean, Doc?"

"At one time, dear lady, it had the meaning of a place for one's bowel movements and bladder evacuations."

"What is that?" Lori asked, opening her eyes.

"Means where you piss and shit," Ryan said. "Don't it?"

The old man nodded, the pearly light from the east illuminating his oddly perfect teeth. "But in this case, my dear Ryan, it means there were doors closed to me. I was allowed certain knowledge on a need-to-know basis. I do recall that Crater Lake was... what was it?"

Finn applied the brakes and cursed his way down through the gears, fighting the truck to a slowing halt. "Road's blocked," he said, pulling the hand brake on with a hiss of compressed air.

Ryan ignored him, concentrating on clinging to Doc's elusive memory. "Crater Lake was what?"

"In truth it was. A man might trudge along, noting every passing phenomenon..." He hesitated, savoring the word, rolling it around his mouth as if he were trying to identify an exotic herb on his tongue. "Phenomenon. Truly said, my boy. It was that and more."

It was too late.

The frail highways that linked brain and memory had fallen asunder again. Gradually, Ryan thought, Doctor Theophilus Tanner was returning to some kind of normal.

"Is someone going to get off their ass and move that fucking pile of wood?" Finn said, winding down the window of the truck and spitting out into the freezing morning. Though the engine was beat-up, at least the heater worked. Outside, the temperature was way down past freezing. Ryan almost expected to hear Finnegan's spittle turn to ice in the air and tinkle on the road.

Ryan peered through the windshield. Ahead he could see the blacktop rolling higher between the banks of dark conifers. Above them, to the left, there'd been an earth-slide, bringing down a jumble of debris, including the snapped branches and fallen trunks of pines. By the look of it, the blockage had been there for a while, confirming their suspicion that the good folk of Ginnsburg Falls didn't travel north very often.

The driving easterly wind blew a flurry of snow against the glass, blinding him for a moment. As it cleared, Ryan thought he spotted movement among the stunted young trees at the side of the highway. But when he stared, there was nothing to see.

"Come on," he said. "Let the kid sleep. Rest of you out and start shifting that mess."

He was glad they'd all equipped themselves with warm coats. The gale was like a whetted knife, making his eye water, the ice particles it carried ripping at the tender flesh of his cheeks. He huddled into the collar of his trusty suede coat, happy to have a moment to admire Krysty's looks. Her fiery hair whisked about her shoulders as she stood tall in her knee-length black fur, its hue so dark it seemed almost blue in the strengthening light.

There was a dusting of snow on the road, and it swirled around his boots. The truck stood tall, its crimson flanks streaked with mud. The long exhaust had retained its original chrome and now reflected the pink glow of the distant sun. Ryan looked at the hubcaps and saw the stunted, distorted image of himself and the others. Then the memory of the flicker of movement in the scrub gave him pause.

"J.B., watch our backs."

"You smell muties, Ryan?"

"No. Thought I saw something out there."

The Armorer nodded. Ryan didn't need to explain any more than that. In the Deathlands, if you thought you saw something, then that was enough. The man who waited to be sure he'd seen something would eventually end up feeding the maggots.

It was even colder here than it had been up in the far north, in the part of the land once known as Alaska. Here it was a bitter, dry cold, a chill so intense that Ryan felt the hairs beginning to freeze in his nostrils. His skin felt a size too small, and if he opened his mouth it made the gaps in his teeth sing with the icy shock.

Finnegan kept the engine of the Kenworth ticking over, occasionally gunning it when it began to falter. He knew, as they all did, that if the truck failed them here, their chances would be a whole lot less than good. The smoke from the exhaust hung blue in the morning until the wind snapped at it and dragged it back along the valley.

The road was blocked for about twenty feet, and Ryan considered asking Finn to gun the engine and drive the rig slowly forward hoping to shift the tangled mess. That might be a whole lot easier than trying to move it by hand. If it didn't work, then it was a long walk to Ginnsburg Falls, and they certainly wouldn't get the red carpet treatment if they went back there.

"Let's get it done," he told the others.

It wasn't that hard. The wood was bone-dry, snapping easily as they pulled and wrenched at it, clearing a path wide enough for the Kenworth. As they toiled, the snow grew thicker, blinding them, settling on their coats, covering the tangled branches and making it difficult to see what they were doing. It took them about fifteen minutes, working together, the sweat steaming off them.

"That'll do it," Ryan called, waving to Finn, who had the side window partly down so that he could see what was happening.

The throaty sound of the powerful engine deepened, and Ryan heard the gears grinding as Finn fought his way up through the box. The wheels began to turn slowly, and the rig eased forward, crunching the remains of the debris into the icy road.

"Climb on!" Ryan called to the others, watching as Lori jumped up, pushed from behind by Doc Tanner, who used the opportunity to snatch a quick feel, his gloved hands sliding between the girl's thighs before he climbed into the Kenworth himself.

"Go on, Krysty," J.B. said, walking along the side of the rig, eyes flicking to the dark shadows in the undergrowth at the edges of the blacktop.

She scrambled up and was pulled into the cab by the pale hands of Jak Lauren, now fully awake, his white foxy face peering into the ghost-dancing snow. Ryan motioned for the Armorer to go next, readying himself to swing up off the highway.

With one hand on the pull bar, his body half on, half off the rig, Ryan called out to Finn to gun the engine. He was looking directly into Krysty's green eyes when he saw them open wide in shock and her mouth begin to form a warning.

The impact knocked him clean off the truck, and he hit the rutted snow with rib-creaking force.

He'd left the G-12 caseless in the cab, his SIG-Sauer pistol holstered at his hip. But the long coat hampered him, tangling as he fell. His ears were filled with a ferocious snarling, his nostrils overwhelmed with the rank stench of the creature that had attacked him.

For a few moments Ryan couldn't even see what it was. He did know that it was large and coarse-haired, and that it had curved canine teeth that snapped at his throat. Part of his brain guessed it was a big timber wolf, but most of his attention was wonderfully concentrated on fighting off the murderous bastard.

He managed to get a forearm across the beast's neck, keeping its clashing teeth a few inches from his own face. Then it kicked, its sharp claws ripping at him, trying to spill his guts steaming into the snow. The Kenworth had gone, probably stopped some way down the slope, the others tumbling from it in a bid to rescue him. But the snow had thickened to a blizzard, dropping visibility to only a couple of yards. If he didn't save himself, the others would be too late.

"Fireblast, you fucker!" he grunted, managing a clumsy punch that made the creature whine in pain and back off for a moment, where it crouched on its haunches, eyes glowing like living rubies.

It was a wolf — one of the biggest Ryan Cawdor had ever seen.

There were burrs matted in its brindled coat, and bloody froth dripped from its reeking jaws. It stood close to four feet tall at the shoulder. Keeping his eye fixed on it, Ryan reached for his blaster, but the torn strip of leather from his coat was still tangled about the butt of the gun. He dropped his hand to the cold hilt of the eighteen-inch panga on the other hip and drew the blade in a whisper of steel.

"Come on then," he called out, blinking in the driving snow.

The world had shrunk to a shifting circle of whiteness, barely two paces across, containing Ryan and the mutie wolf.

Ryan dropped instinctively into the classic knife-fighter's crouch, the blade in his right hand pointed up, feet a bit apart, shuffling in at the wolf, keeping his balance, breathing lightly.

The animal continued to snarl at him, belly down in the snow, inching closer.

Ryan feinted a low cut at the wolf's muzzle, making the beast hiss defiantly as it held its place. The ice was slippery, and Ryan edged closer carefully, watching the monster's eyes. It was one of the things his dead brother had taught him when he was only a callow boy.

He heard Morgan's calm, gentle voice in his head. "The eyes, little one. Always watch the eyes."

The great timber wolf blinked at the human that dared to face it down. Then Ryan saw the signal, deep in the glowing crimson coals.

Now.

He sidestepped the baying charge, hacking at the creature's shoulder as it brushed past him. The blade of the panga bit deep, and he felt the jar as it cracked into bone. Blood sprayed, steaming in the cold, patterning the snow around them. The wolf howled, a tearing, unearthly banshee wail that froze the blood. Then it whirled around, snapping at its own wound, and charged again.

This time Ryan stood his ground.

Meeting the rush head-on, he swung the foot and a half of blood-slick steel with all his power, as if he were trying to fell a great oak with a single blow.

The blade hit the leaping wolf's frothing muzzle and sliced through the flesh of the animal's upper jaw, snapping off oversized teeth and burying itself finally in the side of the creature's skull, just below its crazed eye. The weight of the wolf pulled the panga's hilt out of Ryan's hands, and rolling over in the snow, the beast kicked itself to its feet again, the steel dangling from its narrow head.

"Tough mother, huh?" Ryan said to himself, carefully freeing the pistol from his coat. The animal was panting, blood flowing freely over its grizzled pelt and soaking the earth around its forepaws. Despite the crippling wound, the wolf wasn't finished yet.

The P-226 9 mm blaster was in Ryan's right fist, its twenty-five and a half ounces of weight feeling as familiar to him as his own face in a mirror. The barrel was more than four inches long, and it held fifteen rounds of ammunition. One bullet in the right place would kick a man over on his back, leaving him looking blank-eyed at the sky.

It was enough even for the mutie wolf.

The animal lurched toward Ryan again, hackles up, snow hanging in the folds of muscle around its throat. The gun barked, the flat sound muffled by the storm. The bullet hit precisely where Ryan had aimed it, between the kill-mad eyes.

The wolf howled, the long drawn-out scream of pain and frustrated rage echoing and fading off the trees. The high-velocity round exited from the back of the beast's skull, a fine spray of brains and blood hanging in the air for a moment. A great splinter of bone, inches across, pulped into the snow. The body was knocked sideways, the legs kicking frantically. Ryan heard the mutie beast's claws scrape through the ice at the road gravel beneath.

"Where are you, Ryan?" It was Krysty, stumbling over the slippery ruts of ice, her Heckler & Koch pistol in her hand. Ryan saw her looming through the wraiths of wind-torn snow. She stopped when she saw the twitching corpse of the timber wolf. "By Gaia! That's a big bastard. You all right, lover? I just saw it come out of the shadows at you, but I couldn't be sure what it was."

The Kenworth had finally ground to a halt just around the next bend in the road, its exhaust vomiting smoke. To Ryan's educated hearing, it was obvious that the truck's engine was beginning to fail. There was a much rougher note than when they'd left the town, and he could actually catch the taste in the air of burning oil as the engine overheated. His guess was that they'd covered around fifty miles from Ginnsburg Falls, moving slowly along the treacherous highway. They'd been told that the range of the Kenworth was only around one hundred miles. If that was right, they'd soon have to consider returning and trying to get to the gateway through the town.

Or going on and risking being totally stranded in the desert of rocks and snow.

Once they were all safely in the cluttered, cramped cab of the rig, they discussed what they should do.

"There's a big fucking ridge ahead," Finnegan said. "Saw it 'fore this fucking snow came down. It's only 'bout five, six miles ahead. Sky seemed clearer north."

"This wag won't run much longer," J.B. commented, taking off his glasses and polishing them clean of the smears of snow. "I doubt we'd make it back to the ville."

Ryan nodded his agreement. "Could be best to go on, I guess."

Jak stared moodily out of one of the high side windows and picked his nose. "The trans message was this way? Came for that. Go on."

Krysty shook her head. "If we stop now, then we should make the gateway. Try somewhere else. Farther we go on, the farther we've got to come back. Mebbe on foot. It's a bleak land."

Doc Tanner coughed to clear his throat. "We blunder across the Deathlands, like children, lost in a maze, like the players of some celestial game where we know neither the object nor the rules."

"What's your point, Doc?" Ryan asked.

"The point, my dear and somewhat brutal Mr. Cawdor, is that we could have here a chance, rare as Vatican charity, to improve our tiny store of knowledge."

"The message, you mean?"

"Indeed, I do. I, for one, am set that we should continue across this darkling plain, blighted by the long-dead ignorant armies."

"But we don't know where we're heading," J.B. said. "Got no radios with us."

"Ah, Mr. Dix," the old man said, grinning. "That is where you are wrong. Show the nice gentleman the pretty toy you found on the floor of this rumbling behemoth, dear child."

Lori smiled at him and reached inside her gray fur coat, pulling out a small black plastic box with a dial and several buttons.

Finn glanced sideways at it. "Fucking ace, lady. Nice little radio-trans. Where didja find it, Lori?"

"Under the seat when I get in."

"Got in," Doc Tanner corrected gently.

"It work?" Jak asked.

"Sure does, son," the old man replied. "You found that recorded message on the dial last time, Finn, did you not?"

"Yeah."

"Can you do it on this?"

"Sure. Strength of the signal should tell us if'n we're heading in the right fucking direction. Someone else can drive this crumbling shit heap a spell."

J.B. took over, muttering to himself in a bad-tempered monotone at the way the steering was becoming loose. Finn changed seats and took the little radio from the girl, peering at it in the light from the east of the valley.

"I think it was..." he began.

There was a faint crackling of static and hissing. Ryan had read in an old book, from before the Apocalypse, that in the golden age it was possible to spin the dial on a radio-trans and pick up hundreds of different stations, all broadcasting at once. Now you were very lucky to pick up even a single station.

"Mebbe we've gone wrong," Krysty suggested.

"Mebbe we..."

The voice was deafeningly loud, booming out in the cab of the Kenworth, repeating the same message they'd heard before.

"Stay tuned to this frequency. North of Ginnsburg Falls where the old Highway 62 reaches the trail to Crater Lake. Go there and wait. You will be contacted."

There was a brief pause and then the loop-tape message began again.

"Anyone receiving this message who requires any assistance in any matter of science or the study of past technical developments will be aided. Bring all your information and follow this signal where you will be given help. Stay tuned to this frequency. North of..."

Finn switched the machine off.

"How far?" Jak said, breaking the sudden silence in the cab.

J.B. was still wrestling with the steering of the ailing Kenworth, taking some time to answer. "Can't be more than a few miles. That signal's nearly on top of us, isn't it, Finn?"

"Guess so. Little fucking toy like this trans here... Can't have a range more'n five, mebbe ten miles tops."

"Straight ahead, up those hills?" Ryan asked, rubbing at the windshield with his glove, trying to see out through the swirls of light snow.

The Armorer nodded. "If this bitching wag can make it that far."

His concern was well placed.

About eight miles farther along the old blacktop, just as the bright sun of late afternoon was breaking through, the engine coughed and then seized up with a grinding, metallic sound that had a dreadful finality about it.

Everyone got out of the rig.